Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing Harry Higgs rile up the WM Phoenix Open crowds this year at TPC Scottsdale’s infamous 16th hole “Coliseum.” The SMU product is currently working to earn back his full PGA Tour card on the Korn Ferry Tour, where he recently posted back-to-back top-20 finishes. But the fan favorite is continuing to make waves in the golf industry while he chips away at his game.

At 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 6, Higgs will appear alongside Joel Dahmen, Keith Mitchell and the Bob Does Sports crew in the annual Tito’s Shorties Classic pitch-and-putt match. Ahead of the exhibition event, Higgs spoke to Sports Illustrated about the state of his game, alternative golf courses like Butler Pitch and Putt—the eclectic site of the Tito’s event—and of course, his thoughts on the recent developments in men’s professional golf.

Sports Illustrated: How is your game feeling?

Harry Higgs: This is about as positive as I’ve been towards my golf game. I played the two KFT events in the Bahamas. I had two really good final rounds that made the finishes even better. I obviously would rather not be playing the KFT this year. We were thinking we were gonna get a few more starts on the PGA Tour, maybe 15-20. Now it looks like less than that.

SI: What feels better in particular?

HH: I’m kind of remembering what made me play my best golf. It’s less about worrying about your swing or tinkering. I let that happen for way too long. I tried to make things too freaking perfect. It’s been refreshing to come back down here and just show up and be like, “Yeah, you know what, I’m just gonna beat everybody here.” It’s humbling and refreshing. This is a good start to, in theory, getting demoted. I’m showing myself how good I actually am at this.

SI: What keeps you coming back to the Titos Shorties Classic each year?

HH: This is my third one and the event just gets better and better. I’m not an expert, but the event kind of stands for what golf needs: more fun and more accessibility. The venue, Butler Pitch and Putt—it doesn’t get much better than that. If I had a normal 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work week and I lived in Austin, I would finish every evening there with some friends and a few beers. The most important thing is raising money for charity. They allow us to get picky about who we send some of that money to, which is lovely. The camaraderie, too. Keith and Joel are great friends of mine and so are the folks from Tito’s.

SI: There’s a lot of innovation and creativity in golf course design right now. What are your thoughts on alternative golf courses?

HH: Growing up, I was lucky that my parents had a membership at a golf course. When I was 10 or 11 years old there were other kids my age that I’d see at the course every day. Those are my closest friends. Hell, I’m getting married to a girl who was basically a part of that group! Then you progress and golf gets bigger and bigger and you play these grand places with lots of history. I like to call them the “fancy places.” My group of friends growing up, we always kind of “rated” golf courses by saying “O.K., if you had to play this course 365 days a year, would you ever get tired of playing it?” There are some very fancy places that I have been to that I have enjoyed very much, but they don’t really pass that test.

Inherently, some of these par-3, 12-hole courses—usually they’re in cities where golf is popular but maybe not as accessible—all of those courses pretty much pass our 365-day test. Butler would be one of them. Grass Clippings in Scottsdale is under the lights, and it looks incredible.

It’s fun to be reminded that golf is fun. We all got into this to have fun with either family or friends. Those of us that took a liking to it and had a bit more talent and decided to work harder at it—it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be any less fun for them. It’s therapeutic for Joel, Keith and I to go out there and just hit some short little wedge shots.

SI: Last week the PGA Tour announced a landmark $3 billion deal with private-equity group SSG. What do you make of it all? And do you care anymore?

HH: I wouldn’t say I’m a nerd, but I am always interested. I’m not sure if it will affect me, but I hope that it affects me greatly because then that means that I’m at the top end of the game—and I’m not there currently. But I do think there are so many of us that have just kind of turned it off and are like, whatever.

SI: So what are your thoughts on where the PGA Tour is headed?

HH: I listened to the call. When they spoke about players receiving equity, that was very interesting to me. I think it’s a huge positive. But then I have some worries too, because I have fancy friends who do private equity, and their whole deal is they buy a portion or a whole company. They make it run more efficiently and create tons of revenue off that investment, or create enough revenue to then turn around and sell that investment. These guys all operate the same. So it’s a little worrisome, without any details.

But if you just look into the future, ideally SSG helps trim the fat and gets things humming again, creating a whole bunch of new revenue. Certainly I’d love to have some of the revenue share, or revenue in general, that then we can give back to the players. But there are a lot of other stakeholders. I’m sure sponsors are pissed. Host organizations are pissed. We’re years away from it, but it would be nice to have a product that sells itself. We now have a backing that will allow us to do that.

But most importantly, there are the fans. How do we make this experience better for them too? It seems like this is the first step in progressing towards that. I see it taking two to five years, maybe even longer, for us to kind of get everything operating where we’re just printing money. But then how do we continue to make it grow?

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I was on our Player Advisory Council for three years. I always said we have to think 10 to 30 years down the road to figure out how to make the best product for PGA Tour golf in 2050. That was put to the side over the last couple of years. Now, at least it seems like we may have the ability to look a little further into the future. There’s a lot of people within this beautiful and maddening game who need to be shown that there’s a brighter future ahead.

SI: Fans are asking, “How is this actually going to make the golf product better?” What would you say to them?

HH: I’m a golf fan. I love watching the PGA Tour when I’m not playing. But at times—if not all the time—it is brutal to watch. I get that we’re running 46 tournaments throughout the year, and it’s the same thing over and over and over. I get that it gets old. Hopefully we realize that some more sacrifices need to be made, because the fan is the most important. It seems that more players are realizing that and buying into it, even with the “walk and talk.” It’s nice to know that our broadcast partners are willing to try some new things and there are players that are willing to help.

At the end of the day, golf also is just not that popular. It would be cool if it became more popular. Conversations around the NFL versus golf came up during some meetings in my time on the Player Advisory Council. I’m like … we’re 1/20th of their size. Let’s not even go there. Things can get real fishy if we’re comparing ourselves to other sports. Let’s wait till we grow and maybe we won’t have what feels like 45 minutes of commercials in an hour. I know that’s an exaggeration. But, gosh, it feels like that.

SI: Speaking of money flowing into the game, is there anything you’ve treated yourself to after a good finish?

HH: Here’s a fun story since I’m not a big spender. My first year at Pebble in 2019, I played pretty well and then made the cut Sunday. I was just barely in the top 10 on the 18th hole on Sunday. and I drove it in the fairway. I think it was 3-wood and I completely chunk-hooked it into the water, dropped and eventually two-putted for six. I’m all distraught. Like man, that sucks. I just ruined the chance to have a nice high finish. I started to wonder how much that shot cost me.

But afterwards, I was at this little market in Carmel grabbing a sandwich and I think I remember having $200 in cash with me. I try to travel with some cash. I walk over to the market and I’m still fuming. So I order the sandwich, I’m waiting on it, and as I’m checking out I get a text on my phone. It was the amount of money that I just made, which was six figures. (It was $96,218.57) I was like, “Oh, that’s not so bad.”

There were Girl Scouts selling Girl Scout cookies right out front of the market and I don’t know how I didn’t notice them going in, or maybe they had just set up the 15 minutes that I spent in there. I walked out and I thought, well, I just got a nice text and I still have $200 in my wallet. I bought two boxes of the good ones—I don’t know what they’re called anymore, but they’re good ones. Peanut butter, chocolate wafer, whatever the heck they got. There were two girls. I handed each of them a $100 bill. One of the girls had run to their mother and said, “Oh my God, 100! We got 100.” And the mom said, “Hey, do you want change?” And I just kind of waved off. No, absolutely not.

So that’s like legitimately—other than a house and maybe an upgrade to a first class ticket here or there—that’s like the only thing that I’ve ever done with any sort of money that I have made. And I ate both those boxes and cookies before I left Pebble Beach. 

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